History of Us (a Forum Collaboration)
by Stormshadow3
Summary: Discontinued. Forum collab, as stated in the title. The only good chapters are the ones not written by me.
1. Prologue

**Oh, boy. My first forum collaboration story.**

 **Yeah, I know. How hard can it be?**

 **I don't know, either. That's why I'm here. That's why YOU'RE here. So let's find out, shall we?**

 **The Lightning, the Breeze, the Stream. The Storm. The clans are gone. Scattered in all different directions. The only thing left is the smoke, rising to the ash-filled skies- and the stench of death.**

 **Wind. Rain. Blood. That's what she was born into, the few moons that she was alive. Her name... well, they didn't bother to give her a name.**

 **That was when she found the old tom.**

 **He looks up at her, and something connects. Something dark, but hopeful all at the same time. It was not always like this, he says. Once, when the forests were lush and the prey a running stream...**

 **To when he had a life.**

 **But there are no happy endings in the world, are there?**

* * *

Prologue

By Stormshadow3

She was watching.

Still. Silent. Watching.

She shifts her weight uncomfortably, dark blue eyes on the rising smoke. The smoke that reaches up to the heavens, almost shaped like a paw, a paw with s jagged claw: and the claw, it is pointed to the sky, almost accusingly, but it is weakening. It cannot hold itself up any longer, and then a soft breeze blows across the world and it is gone. Gone like the wind.

She knows she should move, maybe get some more prey... she shook her head. What was she thinking? She didn't have a mother anymore. She didn't have a life anymore.

Nothing mattered. The world didn't matter. She didn't matter.

Then there was soft rustling in the leaves behind her.

She turns, eyes wide. Her claws were sliding out almost by themselves. "Who- who's there? Come out and show yourselves!"

No one answered at first, but right then and there the bushes shook again and she found herself staring at a mottled, old gray tom. Shaking his head, crouched low. Eyes dim. "You may kill me now. Go on."

She knows that she should feel suspicion, but instead... Something else flashes in her mind. Connects. "Why?"

The old tom gave her a faint smile, his rotten yellow teeth gleaming in the early dawn light. "Weren't you going to anyways?"

Curiosity fills her mind. "Why would I? The last thing this world needs is more killing."

"Oh, you know... For competition. Food, fresh water, shelter. That kind of things." He loosened his shoulders, letting his rib cage show under his pale, almost fur-less pelt. "So why not?"

"The same reason you are still holding on to this world," she answers quietly. "What are you doing here?"

He smiled grimly again. "Oh, I'm doing what everyone else is doing. Hiding. Running. Hunting prey and then missing. Fighting other fellow cats. More hiding and running."

She lowers her gaze. "I know. I thought... You would have gotten used to it by now."

"What?" He gives her a funny look. "It's only been a few moons since it became like this."

Strange feelings began bubbling up inside her. "You mean, it wasn't always like this? What with all the..." She searches for the right word. "Destruction?"

He closes his eyes. "No. I remember when the clans still existed..."

She sits down beside him. "What clans are you talking about?"

"Oh, it's a long story," he whispers. "Wasting valuable time."

"What could I do instead in that valuable time, though?" She asks cleverly. "Might as well listen. Go on."

He sighs, as if all his worries are leaving him. Drifting away like smoke on the distance. "Long, long ago..."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1:**

By Goldskies5

"I don't really know what happened to the cats." The tom began. "One morning they were fine, but the next day, they were so weak, so tired, they didn't eat, and they didn't sleep." The tom paused, as if he had forgotten what had happened.

She waited for him to speak. The story was sounding interesting.

"I think the first cat to get the disease was from LightningClan. I think the cat's name was Doestep or something. Anyways, at the gathering, the cats knew something was going on when LightningClan didn't come one night. So BreezeClan decided to head over to LightningClan to find out what was wrong." The tom continued.

The she-cat's instrest was growing. What happened? What did they find?

"We didn't find out what happened until the next gathering, and really, I wish we didn't. BreezeClan told us when they had went to the LightningClan camp, they had found something really weird." The tom paused, probably just for suspense.

The she-cat waited for him to talk again but when he didn't for a while, she noticed his expression was one of fear.

The tom continued after a while, "They-They said that the LightningClan cats were roaming around the camp, doing nothing else. They said they looked so tired and that their eyes were red. They said they looked so skinny like they hadn't eaten at all. When the BreezeClan cats tried to ask what was wrong, they just bared their teeth at them, growling and hissing."

"The BreezeClan cats said they looked more dead than alive." The tom said, shaking. "I wish they hadn't come to the Gathering that day. The cats who went to LightningClan caught the sickness and spread it to their clanmates, who spread it to the rest of the Clans. The next morning, the cats looked so creepy!" The tom said, shivering at the memory.

The she-cat tried to imagine dead cats who didn't eat or sleep. She shuddered. The very thought of it was enough to creep her out. But she still listened to the elderly tom's story, since it was very interesting as well.

"I was lucky not to have caught it. I stayed far, far away from those cats, going on patrol or hunting by myself most of the day. I slept outside of camp during night, scared that I might catch the sickness if I slept with the infected cats." The tom told me.

"Must have been very scary," The she-cat said, "To see half-dead cats everywhere."

The tom nodded, "It was. It was very very scary."

The she-cat could understand his fear. If she was alive at that time, she would probably have felt the exact same way he did.

"No more gatherings were held, since most cats were infected with the disease. Even the leaders." The tom explained. "Nobody hunted, nobody marked the borders, they just roamed around the camp. Me and a few other cats did those jobs, just to get away from the sick cats."

"We sometimes met other cats who weren't sick and we shared the news about our Clan. They were all looking for a cure, but nobody actually found one." He told me, sighing. "If only we tried harder, maybe the Clans would still be here. Maybe you and me would be protecting our Clan at this very moment."

"So that's the end of the story?" The she-cat asked.

"What? Oh no, this is just the beginning." The tom said, smiling somewhat sadly.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

By Icyz10

Dark blue eyes glowed with interest, a sliver of horror in its depths.

"What happened?" she asked faintly. Softly. A small voice barely brushing the breeze.

"Tragedy," the tom responded, his dark gaze looking more alive than ever. "My mother... her name... I never knew her name." He trembled the slightest bit. "She was dead before I could open my eyes and see life beneath her's. You must know what that feels like, to lose someone you loved. But to a kit as young as me when I witnessed her death, it was terrible. In fact, it was my first sight, laying my eyes on that cold, still corpse of her's."

His words rose in the swift air as if they had melted into smoke, ominous and filled with dread, of the past, though, not the future. His entire body arched up, his tail was coiled up and over, and his eyes were flowing with an old sadness.

"But... didn't you live with the Clans then? Weren't you a loyal warrior of them?" the she-cat mewed finally.

"Yes—of course," the tom answered. "We always suspected the same thing that happened to my mother happened to the cat named Doestep. They both died the same way, their eyes sharp and blood-shot, as if they were insane. Didn't eat, didn't sleep... her last moments were of giving birth to me, and then I guess it was too much for her to bear."

The she-cat thought of how she had seen her mother die, how loudly she'd yowled when she saw her mother's dead body, the pain she'd felt when she'd stumbled away into the darkness, not feeling anything but a numbness deep within her.

"Her pelt was clotted with dust, as if she'd been long dead, and her fur was tangled and matted," the tom continued. "Of course, her death was nothing like Doestep's, which is the reason I have hope she didn't have the same sickness the others had." He gave a short pause, perhaps remembering the events in his mind, and the fur along his spine stiffened.

Icy silence fell through the air like a stone.

Overwhelming apprehension prickled in the she-cat's paws, and, like a smooth liquid, traveled throughout her body.

"What—" she started to say.

"She was murdered." The tom curled his claws in. "Her throat was slashed brutally, violently, across her neck, and another scar was on her right side. Perhaps LightningClan was sick before that and they just did something to her... I'm not sure." He heaved a sigh, letting the memories swirl between them.

"Now, with this information, I'll continue the story. The half-dead cats... we—the ones who weren't sick—thought they would die sooner or later. But it turns out StarClan had no mercy on them. They lived, yes they did, but they became wild creatures. They prowled around at night, which made the well cats feel nervous all the time, and we discovered they were leaving signs clawed in the leader's rock."

"I found the first one when I was going to get some fresh-kill. We didn't know how a cat could've scraped into a rock as thick as that, but we paid no notice. For, on the carving clawed deep into stone, it said 'Kill, cat, kill.'

The she-cat inhaled sharply, her nose twitching. "Kill cat kill?" she echoed. "Was that a signal for the sick cats to start killing?"

The old tom chuckled, which sounded like a deep rumble of rock grinding against rock, and spoke in a haunted tone.

"No, they did much worse, young one. Much, much worse."


End file.
